What We Hope
by GoldFlareon
Summary: A desperate trainer longs to see her pokémon again after a short period of separation, but will she like what she discovers? ...A one-shot written for a writing contest on Pokémon Crossroads, my regular pokémon forum.


_Author's notes at the bottom! Hope you enjoy the story.  
_

**What We Hope**

_The afterlife. _

Some say it's the thing they fear most. Others believe that it's a paradise waiting just beyond the horizon. Some believe it doesn't even exist, and some are unsure. Hell, some even pair the word with the club of the same name on that seedy street on the outskirts of the city. Needless to say, it only has meaning if you put meaning to it. I suppose that's like anything, but it's also something that's difficult to give meaning to_. _Surrounding all the possibilities is the idea that I need to make up my mind on what's out there and what holds the true power to decide our fate. Then again...why should I have to decide?

I'm perfectly content not knowing what will happen to me when I kick the bucket. Why should I care, anyway? After I'm dead, I'm dead. There's nothing more to it. I can never reuse my body again, although maybe that's a good thing... After all I've done, people won't even smile at me anymore. It's not as if I'm some notorious criminal that everyone's seen on the face of TV or stuck up on wanted posters; no, it's more subtle than that. It's like people can _tell _how much of an outcast I am with just a look. A single glance can tell you a lot, and I get glances all the time. Eyes full of warning, body tight and compact as if to hold in all their possessions. I'm not one of those charming homeless girls who can feign wealth and happiness. No, instead, I'm someone's messenger pidove.

Well, I was.

I fumbled at my belt in an attempt to draw out my partner, but for the fiftieth time that day, the cold, hard truth spoke to me in multitudes of fear. I've been told that I sound apathetic towards everything, but when it comes to Styzer, the meaning of my, well, _everything _is morphed into an ugly ball of vulnerability. I hate it, and I hate being exposed, but I don't hate her. I could _never _hate her. I love her. I love her with all my heart and I'd do anything for her. I would protect her with my life, just as she would for me...but unfortunately I never get my way. I'm cursed like that, and before anyone thinks I'm taking pity on myself, I'm not... It's just impossible get used to never-ending misfortune. And when it slithers its way along the filthy floor in your conscience, raising its septic, elongated claws so practiced in the art of infection and promised slaughter, all you can do is watch from afar as those deathly spikes plunge into anything and everything you care about. There was only one thing I cared about, and that was Styzer. I..._is. Is _Styzer. Is.

My mind is inverting. My heart is hammering against my ribcage and my brain won't stop thinking. There's a loose cog, or some sort of horrible scratching that's grating against my hope—what little of it I'm ever able to conjure for any event undesirable to me. The waiting is _killing me. _My ability to do anything has been slashed into a thousand bleeding fragments of failure, the nerves still writhing in an attempt to revive the piece as a whole and stitch it back together. _'No,' _I'm always telling myself, _'you have to keep believing.' _But the attempts are frequently futile. No matter how hard I try to tell myself to have hope, there's never any left. Hope is always working on borrowed time.

I kicked the metal frame of the bed, yelping in response as one of the extruding wires entered the top of my foot without permission and punctured my dignity, causing me to whip around and seat myself on the criminally thin mattress and inspect my foot. As I removed my shoe, the guard patrolling the corridor shot a glare to me, and although I knew he was watching me, I simply ignored him. No man would make me turn from what I knew was important to me. It happened once before and it won't happen again.

"Dammit, it's bleeding," I whispered to myself, looking around my cell to see if there was anything I could use to soak up the blood. However, nothing appeared to me, so I simply drew both feet up onto the bed and sat cross-legged, using the bottom of the opposite pant leg to dab the wound.

"Stop crying, you filthy cutthroat," the same guard grunted as his whale-like body hauled itself down the corridor. I snorted at him in a half-hiss, only to hear some following muttering which was probably directed at either my sanity or my intelligence. When you're confined in prison, you'll learn to take insults like they're a light mist that brushes your body with minimal pressure. In saying that, I learned about tough hides long before I ever went to prison.

As surely as I can erase the impact of debasement...I can only hope that Styzer can shake off a simple wound. Oh, surprise surprise, the return of hope in all its glory. Unfortunately, hope has no glory.

**ooo**

Going to sleep that night was hell, to say the least. Is _this _what afterlife is like? Hell? A flaming eternity of pain and suffering, torture and mauling? I'll never be sure. It seems fitting after a life on earth which does the same to you. Or to _me_. To me and to anyone who comes in contact with me. _Anyone _I care anything for.

Is it my fault? Does the infection begin with me? I don't know. I can only imagine so, considering it's not likely that it's any other shared factor with those I learn to care for. If someone told me that as a baby, I had pulled a tail of a ninetales – or multiple tails, at that – I would have no trouble believing them. Even as a baby I was doomed to fail. I killed my mother upon birth, anyhow. Even though I had no inkling of vision or a memory at that age, I can picture it almost as if it _was_ my own memory. Perhaps that's because my father made sure to tell me in excruciating detail how I had taken his wife from him in exchange for _me. _How he would have preferred his wife, whom he loved and had shared countless good times with, over a "wriggling little hatchling" who had no idea what she'd just done.

I can't say I blame him. If that were me in his shoes, of course I would prefer the person I had spent time with and vowed to love and protect for the rest of my life. Why should a newborn baby be any more important than a grown woman? While I know that, he still kept me. I would have expected him to grow to love me as I got older and formed into a person who could actually _do _things. A person who could acknowledge all that he did for me and the generosity that he shared each and every moment that we were together. Did he, though? No. No, of course not.

He claimed that he had an inability to love ever since Maria gave her life for mine. I feel sorry for Maria; I really do. My father didn't deserve her. He was the lousiest scumbag I ever knew growing up. He quit his job and lived off government payment for having a kid. The house never saw a day of cleanliness and beer bottles were seldom out of sight. I learned to grow up without love, and therefore I went in search of it at the tender age of twelve, when I ran away and never turned back. It wasn't long after that when I met Styzer, who was in much the same place as I was. I don't know if her mother died in childbirth as well, but I do know that she was also outcast. Her family had abandoned her as well.

I found her in an alleyway, trying to rummage through a skip. She was so tiny at the time that she had gotten herself in but was incapable of getting herself back out. She had coated the entire inside with a layer of ice, but she ran out of fuel and energy long before she could build herself any sort of staircase or ramp. When I had heard her cries and came to rescue her, she had been reduced to a shivering little lump of dark fur. She was so young that she hadn't been exposed to cold climates enough to be able to withstand or even enjoy them. She must have been in there for hours before I found her, as her voice had been reduced to a few raspy croaks.

She had almost met the afterlife that day, but it was the one time in my life that I stamped my foot down and stared Death in the face. He waved his scythe in my eyes, vowing to come back one day soon, but I promised myself that he could never come for my sneasel as long as she was in my protection. I suppose... I suppose he finally came to collect his debt. But he hasn't won yet.

It's funny that I was a killer at birth—a reaper for the afterlife, considering that's all I've done since. Not until I was thirteen, of course, but ever since then. At first it was a shock and I felt eternally dirtied, but after the tenth victim, I began to get used to it. The concept of an afterlife had faded into nothing but an idea. It no longer mattered to me, which is why I suppose I don't give it much thought today.

Death grew more and more meaningless in the face of practice and coin, until one day I was contracted to eliminate my father. It was no coincidence—I was forced into it as a final test for my acceptance into the organisation who had been employing me for five years. They picked me up shortly after I found Styzer, but trained me before I actually made a kill eight months later, the time in which I had a birthday.

Fact is, murdering my father was difficult. So difficult, in fact, that I couldn't finish the job. After I had cornered him, pinned him down and made him beg for his mercy, the garment around my face slipped off and he recognised me. The hollowness in his eyes which was ever-present when I was growing up had been filled with fear prior to his recognition skills when I overpowered him with ease, but upon learning who I was...it was like his heart broke. I was so taken aback by the apparent regard for my wellbeing he had that I could only sit and stare, unsure of myself and who I was for the first time in years. It was confronting to say the least, and I...couldn't do it. Instead I fled, and that stirred up trouble with the organisation, especially once the police got involved.

It was the kill I made four days ago that landed me in this cell. The bastard had it coming, though. He was an assassin for that organisation I used to work for, and yes, the hit is now on me. Well, it's highly unlikely they can reach me in jail, but they can certainly try. It's not like it hasn't happened before.

It's not me I'm worried about, though. It's not the afterlife that's going to welcome _me_ after I die that I'm concerned with. If I die, I'll deserve whatever's coming to me, but...I can't say the same for Styzer. She's just a victim of a vicious life forced upon her. You could say that it's the same for me, but something about being a pokémon makes her much more innocent than any human.

I was the one who killed that man, and he was the one who...shot her. If it was possible, I would give my life for hers in a mutual exchange. I doubt she would ever let me do that, given how much she cares about me... I can't say I understand why anyone should care about _me. _I'm a lowly thug, not a precious pokémon who has the entirety of the world yet to explore. She shouldn't be with me, but...she's all I have. I'm all _she _has. I feel selfishly connected to her in that way. But if she wanted to leave...I would let her. I have to pray that she doesn't, though, because right now she needs the strongest grip on her life as she can.

I've never prayed before but given the situation, I feel like I should... I need to help her some way and I can't DO anything from inside this cell. They took away any chance I had of saving her and it's driving me insane!

Frantically I slid off my bed, abandoning the attempt to sleep, and scrambled onto my knees. I made a tepee with my arms, grasping hands at the top, and hung my head underneath it. _'I don't...I don't know what to do. How do people pray?' _I thought hopelessly, clenching my teeth before thinking something up. "I need you to spare my sneasel, whoever you are. She has to live. You can't TAKE her from me because it's not fair and she deserves so much better than that. I don't care how long I have to suffer in the dark, just...heal her in the end so that when those people show up to my cell door and tell me that she's doing okay, I can feel a lifetime of relief. Let her go somewhere away from me if that's what it'll take, just don't...don't let the afterlife take her."

I remained in that position for another few seconds before collapsing the design of my prayer and ripping around as I got to my feet and began to pace between my bed and one of the walls. These _walls _that hold me prisoner while my partner is out there, trying to recover from the wound she suffered. It's not like I haven't been locked up before, but every time I have, I knew that I would get _out _and be able to meet up with her again...and that she would be safe...

A ripple of panic made my eyes widen. No. _No._

What if they took her away to put her down? What if they thought she was too dangerous as a criminal's pokémon and wanted to take her life for that? _'No...no..._ _Why didn't I think of this before?! NO!' _I screeched internally, and suddenly the bars making up the front wall of my cell were a giant magnet, and I was the heavy chunk of nearing metal at its mercy. I didn't care that several parts of my body began to beat with a dull pain as I shoved my hands through, slamming my feet into the bars and screamed, "Don't kill her! She's mine! You can't DO this! Give her back to me _now_!"

I knew any form of persuasion wouldn't be powerful enough to get the guards to respond to me even mildly respectfully, or even gain their attention, which was why it was a surprise when one of them appeared in my peripherals. I felt a moment of hope as I watched his form close in on me in the artificially lit corridor, earnestly awaiting his arrival until I felt a sharp pain through my knuckles and globs of saliva on my face as he spat his threats. I wheeled back, noting the furious scowl upon his face and a baton gripped in his hand, but that wasn't going to deter me.

"Tell me what you're doing to my sneasel!" I demanded, and the guard only scoffed. He consulted a clipboard that he had been carrying, which evidently had my name scribbled somewhere followed by the crime I had committed. This was an easy way for the guards identify us and see what we had done so they could make _oh-so-witty _remarks about our lifestyles and alleged crimes. However, this one also told him of Styzer's state.

"You're that murdering scumbag, 'ey? With that dirty little sneasel that looks like a sick rattata?" he bumbled, but all connotations attached to those words washed straight over me and rolled off my back. My eyes widened in near-excitement as I realised that he knew who I was and would likely give me answers. He licked his finger and thumb, then used it to turn the page halfway as he read whatever was on the back of the paper. He dropped the page corner uncaringly and blurted through his white moustache, "Or _looked_, anyway. It died three days ago from that bullet wound."

_My blood ran cold. _

I stared at him with empty eyes. My breath forgot how to pass through my lungs. My arms went limp. The words echoed about the hollow skull upon my shoulders as images and words merged together, forming a nightmarish reality which slid its deadly, ice-cold claws into my soul. My jaw dropped open and I felt the fizz of tears eat at my eyeballs as I tried to speak, but nothing, not even air, would come out. My mouth was dry and my heart's palpitations began to shake me to my very core.

He sneered, shaking his head. "Shoulda taken better care of your pokémon."

My gaze fell to the floor as tears leaked from my eyes, rapidly hammering the concrete floor in shapeless patterns as I followed, my body collapsing as my mind tried to comprehend the horror that had just been told to me. All this time I had thought...I thought that the hope I had actually meant something...that praying would help...that I thought the afterlife might be kind, but now...fear is too strong. She's gone. And the afterlife...the afterlife has_ taken her!_

A sharp intake of breath marked the initial stage for the emotion that was about to overcome me and expose me as the wreck I am.

"_Styzer!_"

Just as an author's note, I'd like to say that there is not supposed to be a direct association between a criminal and a sneasel; I simply chose to feature a sneasel in this story because I happen to like them and when I was envisioning this story, a sneasel was what I pictured. I hate type and species stereotyping, for the record. Had the character lived a different past, her pokémon still would have been a sneasel! Thanks for reading!


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